


Tab A

by bonehandledknife (ladywinter), ladysassafrass



Category: Deadpool (Movieverse), Deadpool - All Media Types
Genre: (of dicks), Bottom Nathan Summers, Canon-Typical Violence, Crack Treated Seriously, Crack with Worldbuilding!, Dark Comedy, Dildos, Dismemberment, F/M, Genital Mutilation, Implied Cannibalism, Implied Genital Torture, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Morbid, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The Entire Fic is a Dick Joke, Top Aliya, Top Wade Wilson, aliya is an OC extrapolated from movie hints
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-23 21:36:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15615552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywinter/pseuds/bonehandledknife, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysassafrass/pseuds/ladysassafrass
Summary: “So what you’re telling me is that there are these dildos in the future— I’m so tickled about that by the way, that the world has gone completely Crapsack but people still bone with toys that should be name branded and hey do you think I can trademark my dick— and the myth goes that they’re actually real fucking dicks that Apocalypse cut off a guy.”Nate slings an arm over his eyes and mutters at the ceiling. “The stories go that he grew them back every night. Kinda like your Prometheus.”





	1. mutual aDICKciation society

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this kinkmeme prompt: https://iiintangible.dreamwidth.org/458.html?thread=125386#cmt125386
> 
> Thank you so much to largishcat and moonbelowsea for beta'ing this monstrosity.

It’s a nice hallway, as things go, this close to the heart of the Askani temple.  Apprentices scrub the pockmarked floors daily; and the rust along the walls and piping was more a thin patina than thick growth. There’s line of sight for a solid twenty feet in either direction before darkness or corners swallow visibility.

It smells very much of human, and that too was a welcome thing because that meant it smelled very little of death.

Nate’s mouth twitches upwards, comforted by consistency of the place he grew up in. He even hears a familiar voice giving a familiar sermon up ahead. 

Aliya scoffs, never one for the Mothers’ preaching.

“...and when your body achieves maturity, it’s best that you relieve the buildup of hormones gracefully, by self-stimulation. Otherwise, your bodily needs will become a distraction to yourself and your teammates.” The Askani Mother is regal and beautiful, battle scars crawling up the left side of her face. Amal carries her serenity like all the elder Mothers do. “Do not ignore self-care: it could mean the difference between life and death to those counting on you.”

“Heh, do you remember when you first got the Fuck-or-Die speech?” Aliya whispers to Nate as they approach the counter at the Holy Vault of Collected Goods.

“It didn’t quite go like that.”

“Manuals are available if you find yourself needing direction. Stimulation aids are also available for checkout.” The Mother gestures at the sacred tabernacle with a hand gnarled by both tumors and arthritis. It looms behind the chain-link fence at the heart of their fortress. 

Aliya leaned on its counter. “Fine, the Fuck-Yourself-or-Die speech.”

“No one’s dying, Aliya.”

“Remember, it’s better to self-stimulate to find out what you like. You should know yourself before you dive into any sort of partnership,” says Amal. “Do note that there are waitlists for use of the Relics. But circumstances such as initiation and marriage will get you special consideration.”

_ “Everyone _ dies, honeybutt, but go out angry and with at least one screaming orgasm under your belt. Isn’t that right, Keep?” Nate’s fiancee taps on the Keeper of Goods’ countertop and winks at the apprentices.

“Name and ID?” the Keeper asks with perfect bored professionalism. 

_ “Aliya,” _ she says as Nate listens with half an ear; they’re being approached.

“Askani’son!” Mother Amal beams at Nate as the apprentices murmur amongst themselves. “I hear congratulations are in order!”

A smile quirks at the edge of Nate’s mouth. She’s always been the hardest on him, but also the most concerned, and kept tabs even after he left her apprenticeship. “Some would say ‘condolences’.” He lets his gaze drift fondly back to Aliya.

“You’d think they’d know my face by now,” Aliya grouses, glaring at the Keeper. 

The Keeper of Goods is dragging out the process. He eyes her, then eyes her ID, does it again, then checks his books. There’s a tic forming beneath Aliya’s left eye, her fingers twitchy.

Nate’s face goes flat. 

After all these years, the admin are still taken aback every time Aliya goes up to the counter. Her face is unsightly with its plastic-baby-smoothness. She’s without any scars to speak of. When the average person is practically  _ born _ with scars, Aliya exists as an oddity.

But she’s just that good, or perhaps that lucky. Aliya comes back from missions with little more than bruises or scratches. Rumors circulate that to have come out of her apprenticeship so untouched she must be a deadweight. They say that her teams are covering for her, that people died to keep her alive, that she’s let others die to keep herself safe, and that fucking her must be like fucking those creepy pre-Apoc dolls. Worse are the rumors that she’s a symptomless carrier of the Techno-Organic virus like some modern Typhoid Mary.

Like most people, the apprentices stare at her. They’re still in their teens and already riddled with scars and tumors.

“And that’s why the condolences, they know your ass just that well,” Nate says as he tosses his ID at the counter too. 

“That’s because they love to see me go,” Aliya says.

Nate smirks at her but addresses the Keeper pointedly, “We reserved the Relic with marriage priority.”

The Keeper huffs but brings up a small metal chest, matte and dark. The apprentices shoot excited questions at Mother Amal. 

Nathan knows the mythology behind the Relics. Some call the outlandish stories ‘history’, but he knows better than to trust hearsay from so long ago to survive with any accuracy. That's not the point of stories, of course. They are meant to explain the inexplicable, to make sense of an unkind and random universe. But that doesn't mean Nate doesn't grit his teeth when someone calls it history. 

Aliya laughs.

“Let’s spread ‘em and see it then.” She’s heckling the Keeper even as he opens the box for verification and item check before sign out. The trainees crowd close after she gives a nod and the Keeper reveals to them the Relic on its bed of soft velvet.

“Oooo!”

In the box sits a lifelike dildo, skin-toned and strangely warm. It boasts just the right length and girth, with these beautiful little scarred protrusions that, Nate knows from experience, make it mindblowingly effective. And whatever strange material it’s made of needs very little upkeep and is antibacterial, antifungal, and most importantly,  _ antiviral. _

The Askani Mother nods. “The Relics are some of the most priceless artifacts in the entire fortress.”

“And it’s hell gettin’ on the waitlist for it,” Aliya says. “I swear, half the reason why I’m marrying this fucktoy is to get myself half a day with the gloriousness of a true Relic instead of a cheap imitation.”

“You’re selling it short,” Nate deadpans.

“Damn right. More like 85% the reason why I’m marrying you.”

“Closer,” Nate agrees.

 

—

 

“O-okay _first_ of all,” Wade interrupts, voice strangled, beneath Nate in the past-future of Nate’s new reality. “What’s this deal with telling me about your wife, while making heavy eye contact, as you’re adjusting to an _assful_ of cock.” Wade’s neck is a beautiful arc of tension as Nate leans his weight on Wade’s shoulders to sink to the hilt. Nate needs a moment or three to parse the sensation where his ass has spread around that hardness. Nate can’t let himself move yet, because the insistent bumps and ridges are perfect, and right _there_ , and he’s _not ready to come yet._

Nate clenches around it, just to test if he can, and Wade’s voice briefly flies up an octave.

“Secon _ nnngh _ —d, flashbacks are  _ my _ thing, no touchie, unless with your butt, and  _ can you move already?” _

Nate opens his mouth to say no, but Wade catches his look and shoves his hips upwards in an impressive show of strength. Nate rides the movement, clenching his teeth on the desperate sound that rises in his throat as Wade somehow stuffs himself deeper.

He loses his balance, stars bursting behind his eyes. 

And then finds himself upended and looking up at Wade, who hitches Nate’s thighs over the crooks of his elbows. Wade looks down at Nate, aggrieved. He draws out slow, like some kind of threat. 

Nate’s toes curl in anticipation.

“Third, not to  _ harp _ on your future sex cult’s  _ tastes, _ but right now I don’t. Fucking. Care. About some futuristic  _ mystic dildo _ that  _ apparently _ reminds you of  _ my dick.” _ Wade punctuates his words with sharp thrusts and it takes all of Nate’s willpower to hang onto the thread of the conversation.

It would be so easy to let it go but—

“You’re not wrong. But you  _ should  _ care,” Nate grits out. “It  _ is  _ your dick.” 

Wade loses his balance and crashes forward. “Come again??” 

Nate takes the opening and flips them again, staring down at Wade.  _ “Listen,” _ he says. “I’ve got to—” 

 

—

 

“Tell me about it,” Aliya whispers into Nate’s ear in their bedroom, not 15 minutes after they left the Keeper. It only took that long because they’d swung by administration to make the marriage official.

And to pick up a new harness for the relic.

It’s sitting there on the pillow near Nate’s face, all scarred and pre-slicked in the harness, and he makes an inquiring noise as he stares at it. Pushes back into Aliya’s fingers, working him open. She’s plastered against his back, as he’s up on all fours.

“What, my vows?” Nate pants, “I forgot ‘em already.”

“No, you liar,” Aliya laughs, then amends, cajolingly, “My ‘comrade, my accomplice, my consolation, my friend’… Come on, _ tell me  _ about your first time on it, you gotta. You’re getting first go at it to fuck me wet.”

Nate closes his eyes against that mental image for a moment. Her fingers stab a pointed  _ Hellooooo? _ against his prostate.

“I know you heard me, Nate,” and he hears the grin in her voice, “but let me paint more of a picture. You, the relic, and your fresh cherry ass.”

Her fingers pause and he growls at her. 

“And thennn? Were you nervous? What were you wearing?”

“Are you  _ seriously _ trying to have phone sex with me right now?”

“Not the object I’m trying to insert, hunnybuns, but good call.” Aliya makes a light, pointed caress inside him and a shudder runs down Nate’s spine. “Did it look intimidating your first time?”

“No,” Nate denies, he’s heard too many stories about people’s experiences with the dildo, spent too long on the waitlist. “I’d— ah  _ fuck, _ hurry  _ up— _ I’d been stretching myself at nights for a-a week beforehand.” 

She gives him three fingers now, spreading and tugging him wider. Nate’s forearms collapse at the sensation and he’s holding himself up by the elbows. “Like this? Lubing yourself all wet so it slides in nice?”

“Heard it was big.” Nate’s neck feels hot and he knows Aliya can see it. “Intense, for a first time.”

“But you jumped right in, didn’t you, overprepared?”

She shoves in a fourth finger, and Nate shakes his head, thighs shaking. “Can’t really be, for that.”

“I know what you mean, the texture right?” She removes her fingers and lightly holds the tip of the dildo to Nate’s hole. It spasms at the feel of the Relic, eager for what’s coming. “The skin is just amazing, just enough give, and so warm and lifelike,” she coos like a 20th-century infomercial as she starts working it in, holding the base.

The ends of the harness tickle at his thighs. Nate’s grateful to the irritating sensation as it’s keeping him from making dumb noises.

“Did you fuck yourself this slowly Nate? Sink it into you like you’re savoring it? Or did you let yourself be impatient for once? Was it harder?”

“ _ Harder,” _ Nate agrees. Asks. (Begs.)

“I know right?” Her laugh is like a bell. “We can do slow later.” And she shoves it in to the base.

Nate’s voice echoes in the room. He barely registers that he’s been shouting before Aliya pulls the relic back out, shimmying into its attached harness in a blink and then throwing herself onto the bed. On her back.

“Come on cowboy,” she slaps her lap, making the relic bobble. “I wanna see how you ride. Do it like the very first time~~” she sing-songs.

“Your taste in Oldies is terrible,” Nate growls as he swings a leg over her hips, rises up to center himself over the ancient, scarred flesh.

“I do love my olds, and as you very well know I put a ring on it.” She tugs at his hips, “Hey, c’mere already.” Aliya might be strong, but she isn’t as strong as Nate, and the angle is working against her. 

Nate could hold himself away easily but luckily for her, that’s the last thing he wants to do. He slides back onto the relic with a pleased moan.

“Yeah, just like that,” she whispers, “let me see you.”

Nate is not sure that there’s much to see, given the techno monstrosity eating at his left side, but he arches a little anyway. It brings him to a better angle to draw up, and then sink down again.

“That’s right,” she coos, “I love the sounds you’re making.”

...he’s making sounds?

She laughs at his confusion. “Come in already,” she says, nodding, letting go her psychic shields. 

Nate ‘leans in’, and sees himself as she’s seeing him, and his image is, as always, weirdly soft. Attractive. Vibrant.

He looks wrecked in Aliya’s lap. Aliya finds it incredibly hot, even though Nate squirms away from the mental image. 

_ Imagine, _ she mentally croons, _ imagine you were one of the war party who first brought the relic back. You’ve ransacked their holdings, and in their most secret of places, they’ve hidden a relic. _

_ This relic, _ she mentally singsong as she grinds up into Nate.

He gasps and he knows the stories of how, long ago, the Relics have been fought over. How  _ wars _ were raged over ownership, how the Askani temples eventually retrieved them. 

Nate, leading the mission, would have claimed it for the temple but would still have to hide the contents from his men. He would have to walk about, with the box tucked under his arm, and make his rounds to settle all further post-battle logistics and disputes. Check in with his team. Attend to whatever prisoners captured and whatever else was to be brought back to the temple. Then he’d have to go back to camp, calmly, and shut the tent, calmly, and then, with shaking hands, open the box again.

_ So eager, weren’t you, Nate? _

The relic was said to have been cut-off from an actual person, and it looks it. Unquestionably a penis, with balls attached at the base; life-like in color and temperature and looking battle-hardened. Looking like adrenaline and war-fervor had primed it _ready._ (Looking like Nate felt.)

It’s the perfect combination of intimidating and just about doable. 

_ I know right? _ Laughter.  _ People would still be working around camp, outside your tent, settling down for rest before their journey home. But you have no shame, don’t lie, you’re gonna try it out right there. _

_ Show me. _

There would be sweat forming at the base of Nate’s neck, but he slides into his bedroll and shucks down his pants just enough to reach between his legs. He wouldn’t have the space for long prep, too young and too dumb about it, just slicks up the relic itself and starts pressing it in slowly, steadily, stubbornly, as he fights his own body to just  _ obey. _

_ I thought you were better at planning, Nate? Wouldn’t you want this to go smoothly? _

It wouldn’t be smooth. Nothing about the relic is smooth, or easy; the scarred textured surface tugging at his rim playfully everytime he eases it back, tickling at his hole when he tries to press it in. He would breathe and  _ breathe _ and he wouldn’t seem to be able to relax enough for it until suddenly it was past his defenses and it’s all Nate could do not to make a sound. 

_ Because there are people outside isn’t there? A couple people would discuss guard shift change-over, right outside your tent. _

His thighs would be trembling, feet still bound together by his pants, groin slick with sweat, dick furiously twitching as if trying to reach his stomach for some small bit of friction.

Inside him, the head of the relic edges just out of reach of his prostate.

_ Come on, just a little bit more, hun. _

Nate’s hand would tremble around the relic’s base, and he would have to work up the nerve to push it in further... 

But then he does, because his rim shrieks with delight at the pleasure. And then he does, because his prostate lights up with sensation too. And then he  _ does _ because he’s fucked himself full of dick... and then needs to experience it all over again. He would be pistoning it in and out but the angle’s still fucked, and he’d have to rise up on his knees. He’d have to tear down the scream building in his throat because the angle is new, and so much  _ better, _ and he could bounce on it now.

“Yes just like that,” Aliya says with a groan. “But let me hear you.” She pulls at his hips and thrusts up into him, “Let  _ them _ hear just how much you  _ deserve _ this trophy.”

 

—

 

The dick inside Nate stabs up suddenly, just as large hands pull him roughly down, and something that he won’t admit is a scream chokes out of him.

An amazed sort of laugh shakes loose Wade beneath him, and that sensation just makes Nate shudder more. He rises up again, and sits back down. 

“You think it’s  _ funny?” _  Nate grits out. 

He’s holding back his orgasm with nothing but the need to get this story out.

“What, funny that this reminds you of your honeymoon sex? Funny that your ass is eating my dick like the most delicious of treats?” Wade gasps out, irises blow wide open in lust, hips pistoning up into Nate as much as he could every time Nate drops himself down. “Funny that skin like fossilized burnt avocado is what floats your log?”

Nate’s response is cut off as Wade  _ grinds _ himself into Nate’s ass. 

“It’s fucking  _ hilarious,” _ Wade whispers into Nate’s ear like a fingernail down his spine, rolling his hips like he wants Nate to feel every millimeter of his skin as Wade  _ soaks him wet _ inside and the worst (the best) of it is, is that Nate does.

He opens his mouth and finds himself shaking loose.

 

—

 

The first time he clocked the man in the Ice Box, it had only been as another obstacle getting in the way of avenging Aliya and his daughter.

The first time that Cable was forced to  _ stop _ and see the man there, he saw a fighter. Someone who was scarred and gorgeous and looked like home; cheekbones deathly sharp and eyes ancient, unlike the strange plasticity and smooth features of the rest of the 21st century’s denizens.

The first time Cable was forced to see  _ Deadpool, _ as they fought in the transport, he saw muscles held tightly in sleek red. Saw flexibility and speed and a trim waist, saw someone who moved like only one other person. Though, Aliya had more of a sense of self-preservation. 

Deadpool fought like he leaned into the pain. And laughed into it too.

The first time  _ Nate _ saw Deadpool’s face he was reminded of the Relic, of sex and worship and sticky pleasures. Of glorious texture, and perfect girth, and flushed incredible heat.

But the first time Nate finally saw  _ Wade, _ and understood what he was seeing? 

He saw his wife.

 

—

 

Nate eventually drifts back into himself, still shaking with the aftershocks of his orgasm.

Wade is already talking, of course. “So what you’re telling me is that there are these dildos in the future—I’m so tickled about that by the way, that the world has gone completely crapsack, but people still bone with toys that look like my dick, which should be name branded beeteedubs, and, hey, I should trademark my schlong— and the myth goes that they’re actually real fucking dicks that Apocalypse cut off a guy.”

Nate slings an arm over his eyes and mutters at the ceiling, “The stories go that he grew them back every night. Kinda like your Prometheus.”

“Prometheus? That was the worst Alien movie yet.”

“What? Never mind. The point is, I’ve only met one person who can grow back body parts at that speed. I even hacked the X-Men’s database to make sure.”

“Hah,” says Wade, smacking a hand lightly on Nate’s stomach. “Professor Exie is gonna be mad at you for that.”

Nate growls at the mention of the Professor. They haven’t met in person yet—Nate’s made sure of it—because he’s pretty sure they would not get along at all. Moderates like the Professor prevent people from fighting back until it’s too late to make a difference. 

“It’s  _ you, _ you shithead,” he snarls, sitting up to look Wade in the face.

“What about me?” The idiotic dipshit still looks unconcerned.

“You’re the only one who I know who could live that long and regenerate your genitals that fast.”

“Huh, go me then.” Wade then seems to notice the pained look on Nate’s face. “But that’s… bad, in this case?”

“It means at some point Apocalypse is going to capture you, try to kill you, realize he can’t, and instead torture you for as long as he can. Which could mean  _ years.” _

“Oh, yeah, that does kinda sound like a nightmare, yeah,” says Wade absently, a bit shifty-eyed. He’s rubbing Nate’s flesh nipple, watching it bounce back up. Wade is always so touch-oriented, like a kid who gets to unwrap his favorite toy every day. “And you’re sure it’s me, right?”

“Positive.” The sensations coming from his nipple are attempting to unhinge his focus.

“Lotta certainty there for a Cyberman. What if you rode some other mutant’s dick to Pound Town, who’s not born yet, who can also grow back a pennywhistle in less than 24 hours?”

“I  _ know _ I didn’t.”

“Yeah, but how do you  _ know _ know?”

“Because I…” Nate grumbles into his hand as he covers his eyes. Wade’s nosing at his nipple, his scarred skin rough against the sensitive flesh.

“Because you what, Nathan? Share with the non-telepathic class, please.”

“Because I  _ recognize _ your lumpy fucking dick, asshole,” Nate grits out, hating his cheeks for flushing a bit.

Wade leers at him, all predatory teeth. “Gotcha,” he whispers before he bites down. Nate groans at the pain, the pressure, the  _ pleasure _ . He never was one for aftercare. It took Aliya begging, groaning,  _ wiggling _ to make Nate stay in bed for even twenty minutes after, but Wade is a relentless human octopus who won’t let him go unless he has to piss. Since they often fall into bed too fast, Wade really likes to take his time exploring Nate afterward, and Nate can no longer find a good reason to turn him down.

But they have a conversation to finish first. “Wade.”

“Mmm?” Wade hums into Nate’s stomach as he kisses and licks his way down, concentrating on the seams where techno-organic parts meet human flesh. It’s really fucking distracting.

“Are you— Do you really not care that Apocalypse is going to come for you? And hurt you?”

“Hurt being a nice way of saying ‘getting my rod and tackle ripped off repeatedly’ for, what was it, a hundred days?”

“At least.”

“Hey, hey, hey, why are we making that face?” Before Nate can stop him, Wade crawls up to smush Nate’s cheeks between his hands. “I’m immortal, buddy. I’ll live through whatever Pocky-bear does to me.”

“But that thoesn’t thean—gert ofv—” Nate shoves Wade’s hands away. “That doesn’t mean you don’t feel pain. I know you do. And I don’t…”

_ I don’t want to see you get hurt _ , is what he nearly says before he musters the self-preservation to shut his mouth. He doesn’t make eye contact with Wade, doesn’t want to see if he understands. Instead, he wraps his arms around Wade and squeezes. Wade happily squeezes right back.

“Your wife seems like a cool gal,” Wade murmurs into Nathan’s right shoulder.

“She...is.” The verbiage of his situation is so fucked. The future conditional is his past tense, and the entire situation makes Nate so far past  _ tense _ that the stress makes his jaw ache from how hard his teeth grind. 

“Would love to have met her,” Wade says through a yawn, but it’s gentle. He knows what he might be stirring up.

Much later, when Wade’s snoring and Nate’s thoughts are still gnawing at the edges of his consciousness, he whispers back, “She would’ve loved you.” 

 

—

 

Aliya is sobbing, chest heaving with exertion, crying full on ugly-snot-tears and wailing as Nate hauls her away by the waist.

“Don’t do it!” she screams, reaching out as if to hold on just a little longer. 

“You’ve got to let it go,” Nate says blandly.

The Keeper of the Goods gives her a dry look and closes the box on the Relic, item check completed. He turns away with it to head to the sanitation area, the intake paperwork shoved in a folder beneath an armpit.

Aliya lets herself become deadweight in Nate’s arms as he continues dragging her off.

“It’s not like we can’t sign up again.”

“But the waitlist is  _ forever,” _ Aliya mourns. She hangs listlessly in his hold like a recalcitrant cat. “Couldn’t Apocalypse have done us a solid and nabbed us a few more dicks or ten while he was at it.”

Nate hums, trying to ignore the shiver in the back of his head. “Thinking about it, I doubt that’s actually how the Relics were formed. Hasn’t anyone looked into their history? Dug deeper into where they came from?”

“You dug yourself  _ pret-ty _ deep on that dick, from what I saw.” 

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“What can I say? I like to grab the chances when they pop up.” Aliya’s hauled herself up so that she’s walking on her own two feet now, but lets herself stay within in the circle of his arm. “Don’t tell me you don’t either.”

Nate snorts. “Like you said.” He looks at her from the edge of his eye as he tightens his grip slightly. “The waitlist is hell.”


	2. 2 dick 2 furious

One day in the 21st century past, in Nate’s future nonconditional, Nate comes home early from a job and sees blood leaking below the bathroom door.

“Wade?” The door is locked and he definitely hears scuttling and limbs moving about.

“Oh, shit fuck!” he hears from behind the door. “Uh, don’t come in. It’s fine, everything’s fine. Don’t worry!”

“There’s blood—”

“I’m cleaning it up I swear, it’s fine.”

“Was there an intruder? Are you taking care of a body?

“Uhhh, would it be better if I was?”

That seems like a good enough reason to break the doorknob with his TO hand. He wrenches open the door to find Wade naked, one foot on the bathtub’s edge, a bloody knife in one hand, and what looks like a bloody pig intestine in the other.

Then he looks at Wade’s blood-caked crotch and yeah, that’s not an intestine. The world tilts on its axis. “Wade.”

“Uhh, it’s not what it looks like?”

Nate rubs his hand over his eyes and tries to take deep breaths. “So that’s not your dick and balls in your hand, that you just cut off, with—” he peers through his fingers, “—my best hunting knife.”

“Okay, maybe it’s exactly what it looks like. Don’t worry, I just took a tinkle and it’ll grow back in aboooooout thirty minutes or so.”

_“Why.”_

“Hmm?”

“Why are you... castrating yourself?”

Wade pauses like he’s trying to remember why he’s doing this.

 _“Wade.”_ Nate doesn’t know why _this_ gets to him, of all things. He’s come home to Wade hanging from the rafters, Wade painting pentagrams of blood on the floor, Wade butchering a gang member in the bathtub (for easier disposal), Wade walking around on his knuckles with his legs dragging behind him as he regrew nerve endings in his spine. But _this…_

Nate finds himself in front of the fridge, reaching in to grab a beer. He dumps one down the hatch, then he grabs another and does the same thing until the foam chokes him.

“Whoa, watch yourself there, Priscilla,” calls Wade who’s put down the... _his_ bits and followed him from the bathroom.

“Don’t touch me,” growls Nate. That stills Wade enough that he amends himself. “Until you wash your hands, for fuck’s sake. In the bathroom, not where the dishes are.”

“It’s not like you’ve never had my fluids inside you before,” grumbles Wade, but he still retreats back to the crime scene and Nate hears the tap turn on. He relaxes a bit, but only enough to feel his heart thump like a jackhammer.  

He can’t breathe. He needs to grip the sink to keep upright, careful not to dent the side his TO hand is clenching. He needs to think, but all he can see is Wade strapped down to a gurney, screaming and screaming and screaming as Apocalypse slowly rips the skin surrounding his penis and testicles off his body, blood pooling on the gurney and spilling onto the floor in puddles.

Like the puddles in their bathroom. The image mixes with the victims of Apocalypse that Nate has seen in his life. He knows how many minutes it takes to die from bleeding out. And now he knows that Wade wouldn’t pass out from the pain or the blood loss. No, his body wouldn’t be that merciful. He’d experience every waking minute of the pain Apocalypse would inflict on him for a hundred days.

Nate’s throat is dry, like it’s full of ash.

“Hey.” Wade’s voice draws Nate out of his thoughts. Then Wade waves the fleshy dick in his hands. It jiggles and bobbles. “I need to pop this the freezer, think you can move a smidge to the right?”

Nate does. In fact, he faints dead away.

 

—

 

“It really does seem like it should be attached to someone, doesn’t it?” Aliya murmurs, as she turns the relic from side to side, squeezing it. “The give to the surface, the variation of it across the head versus the balls. The detailed textures. Even the temperature is perfect, and it doesn’t seem to absorb fluids.”

Nate grunts where he’s tucked his face into the curve of her neck, spooned up behind her, arms around her waist. They’re resting after round three, still shivery from aftershocks, holes a bit sore.

“I wonder if it’s true what they say, that these were ripped off a guy.”

Nate shivers. Hair rising up on the back of his neck, his balls actually curling up into him a little in revulsion.

“How long do you think it takes to grow back? Would Apocalypse sit there and watch just so he could rip off the next one, once the fruit fully hangs from the tree—”

“Aliya. Please.” The idea of someone going through that kind of pain… Nate doesn’t want to touch it. He knows what genital mutilation looks like and it bothers him on a level that other types of torture don’t, anymore.

His wife cranes her head back to look at him. Her head tilts in thought. “Ah. Whoops. Sorry, probably worse for you to talk about, yeah? Even though I have a dick.” She pokes the tip of the relic against Nate’s cheek playfully.

“No,” Nate says, and snatches it out of her hand. “Now you _don’t_ have a dick.” But it makes him imagine it, what it’d look like if Aliya were male. How she might sound, might hold herself, might react to things.

How she might be caught, and tortured, and in pain.

“You’d try to rescue me, wouldn’t you, you idiot, if it was me.” She blows out a breath, and with it laughter, creaky, a bit false. “You don’t need to bother, butterbiscuit. Leave me there, I’d get out just fine or die trying. It’d be fun. It’ll give me a challenge for a change.”

“But if you did.”

“But if I did, I’d cut it off _myself_ to force it down Apocalypse’s throat.”

“I’d save you if you got captured,” Nate promises. “I’d vowed to be your ally, your comrade, your accomplice in your bullshit—”

“Thanks, dumbass,” Aliya trills. Eyes him. Goes serious. “But _don’t.”_

“I’d go after you,” He insists. “I’d get you out of that.”

She says, “Clue-by-four I don’t _have_ a dick.”

She says, “I’m not going to _get captured,_ stop thinking dipshit things.”

She says, _“Wake up.”_

 

—

 

Wade’s waving at his face with a giant rainbow fan. Its the first thing Nate sees as he comes to on the couch.

“Oh good, you’re awake.” Wade tosses the fan away and it clatters on the ground. “You smacked your head pretty hard on the linoleum but the floor’s fine. Have you been eating?”

Nate blinks at him.

“Low blood sugar is a bitch and a half. I made peanut butter and mustard sandwiches because that’s all we have left in the pantry because I forgot to go to the store while you were gone. Oh, are you dehydrated? I thought we’d gone over this: water’s free in this century. We have plenty of it and it’s clean and lead-free because we’re white. Appreciate it and take a fucking sip, bitch.”

“What?” Nate sits up. Wade has the mask on, along with a Hello Kitty tee-shirt and— “Wade, is that a thong?”

“Oh surprise! That’s what the whole—” Wade waves his hands in the general direction of the bathroom, “—situation was for. Was hoping to surprise you before you got home. But isn’t it kinda nifty?” Wade then strips off his shirt. On his chest are little round silver nubs with tassels that cover his nipples. “Ta-da!” He throws up his hands in what Nate knows now to be a theatrical pose.

Nate blinks again. He tries to get his wits about him, but it’s hard when the tassels on Wade’s chest shake with the slightest movement. And the thong. It’s pink and lacy, with a hint of sheerness. Sheer enough that Nate can see what’s _not_ there.

“Wade—”

“Shhh, have a sandwich.” Wade crawls into his lap, bringing the sandwich to Nate’s lips. Nate can feel Wade’s smooth crotch against his dick, which is starting to swell in response, _fuck_.

He pushes the sandwich away and grabs Wade by the shoulders. “Wade, stop.” His TO hand drops to Wade’s hip to stop him from grinding against Nate but _fuck_ it feels _good._ “Stop. Can you take off the mask?”

Wade stops.

He’s too still for a moment, but then a fake grin stretches beneath the red fabric. “Whassamatter, Nate-honey?” Wade takes off the mask and it’s clear that the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. His fingers, lingering on the back of Nate’s neck, are fidgeting.

Nate holds onto him calmly but firmly. “Are you...mutilating yourself to prepare for Apocalypse?”

“What? No! I just...I haven’t done this in a while.” Wade gently rolls his hips against Nate and it takes all of Nate’s concentration to not groan at the contact. “Vanessa called it my Lorena Bobbitt routine except I’m the husband, too. Occasionally I’d do it for her so I could wear a strap-on for her, like with those dragon dildos? So hot. Or so I could wear the fancier lingerie when I wanna feel pretty. You ever see a hairy cock bulging out of lacy panties? Ugh, bad look. And super uncomfortable. Makes the string feel like it’s flossing your ass.”

Nate stares at Wade’s perky grin, his mind flooded with images of Wade wearing even more scandalous lingerie than this, dressed like a woman and— _fuck! Focus, Nathan!_

“But why do you need to... do _that_?” presses Nate.

Wade drops his hands to his hips and lets out a nervous chuckle. “I mean, if it ain’t the way your cookie crumbles, that’s, uh fine. It’ll grow back in an hour or two. I’ll just be, uh—” and he starts climbing out of Nate’s lap. Which, _nope_.

Nate grabs Wade’s ass and pulls it back onto his lap. It makes the tassels jiggle in an obscene way. “Just—just wait a moment,” he growls, trying to hide his blush. He can tell he’s failed, because Wade looks utterly delighted at feeling Nate’s half-chub. “I just don’t want you to be in pain for me.”

“Honestly? It doesn't hurt as bad as you expect. I ice it beforehand and after and it just bleeds a lot so it looks worse than it is.”

“Wade—”

Wade presses two fingers against Nate’s lips. _“Nathan._ I— that’s distracting,” he whines as Nate starts kissing those fingers gently. He grabs the sides of Nate’s head instead, forcing him to look Wade in the eye. “I want to do this, okay? It’s worth it. Plus, I’m extra sensitive down there right now.” His hips give a wiggle and Nate involuntarily tightens his grip on Wade’s ass.

“Fuck,” Nate bites out. “Okay.”

And Wade pulls Nate into a searing kiss. He wiggles his tongue against Nate’s in a way that makes Nate groan and roll his hips. Wade removes Nate’s scarf and starts pawing and pulling at Nate’s clothes. It takes careful balance for Nate to keep Wade on his lap while he pulls off his shirt, pants, and boots.

“Fuck, I wanna tie you up in this scarf,” growls Wade into Nate’s neck. “Tie your hands above your head and fuckin’ ride you.”

“You say that—” Nate gasps as Wade bites down hard just above his collarbone “—every time you jump me like this.”

“Well, when are you gonna let me?”

“I’ve never stopped you, moron.”

Wade leers at him, pushes Nate flat onto the couch, and wrenches his arms up by the wrists hard enough that Nate grunts. “This okay on your rusty shoulders, old man?”

“Yeah,” huffs Nate. The silky nipple tassels brush against his chest as Wade adjusts himself and Nate shivers. He’s so turned on it burns. “Get on with it already.”

“Pushy, pushy,” tsks Wade as he shimmies his knees up alongside Nate’s body until his groin hovers over Nate’s chest. Nate feels the soft cotton of the scarf tighten around his wrists as Wade ties a comfortable but unforgiving knot. The thong is tantalizing. The color matches the redder parts of Wade’s scars. He wonders if the lace tickles.

“There—what?” Wade’s breath flutters as Nate presses his tongue against the whorls of scars on Wade’s stomach, gently huffing hot breath to make Wade shiver. “Whatcha doin’, big guy?”

Nate hums and hauls Wade’s ass towards him with the telekinesis. Wade’s not expecting it and nearly falls over the armrest. Nate catches him with his TK, holds him until Wade has a grip on the couch. He doesn’t stop kissing Wade’s inner thighs, mapping the pockmarks with his tongue, nor does he stop mentally palming Wade’s bare ass, kneading and squeezing the firm flesh. The breathy moans he coaxes out of Wade make him grin. He pulls Wade’s crotch closer to his face until he can gently pull down the thong with his teeth.

“Jesus Hamburger Helper Christ, Nate,” pants Wade. “You dirty cheater.”

Nate rubs his nose over the lumps of healing flesh. The base of Wade’s dick is still there, but his crotch is smooth and strange with new skin and the slightest presence of tumors, creeping in from his pelvis. He knows what it took to get it like this, but the way that Wade pants above him and grips Nate’s wrists to keep control chases away the unpleasant thoughts.

“Can you come like this, Wade?” he asks softly.

“Yeah,” breathes Wade. “Yeah, last time I did this with Ness, I could still feel the fireworks. Kinda like coming dry.”

Humming, Nate gives an experimental lick to the nub.

Wade fucking _wails_.

“You weren’t kidding about being extra sensitive, huh?” Nate can’t (read: won’t) hide the smugness in his voice.

“Fuck off and get me off, Nathan—a-ahhh!” Nate licks a long stripe up his crotch and then settles for soft kisses and slow licks. Bites are too much, but Wade whines extra keenly if he wraps his mouth around the right spot and sucks. Wade shamelessly grinds against Nate’s mouth, all the while groaning and holding Nate’s arms down. Nate is in control of this moment, even with Wade holding him down and facefucking him. He could shred the scarf with a tug of his techno-organic arm, grab Wade, flip their positions, and take what he wants. Wade knows that too. But it’s just as much fun to let Wade take the reins and ride his face. The wet gasps and breathy curses go straight to Nate’s dick like liquid heat.

It doesn’t take long for Wade to pull his crotch away from Nate’s face and put his mouth there instead. Nate groans into Wade’s mouth, straining against Wade’s tight grip in a reflexive effort to touch him. He’s forced to nuzzle him instead, making Wade laugh.

Wade pulls away to sit upright. One of the nipple tassels fell off in the struggle and Wade pulls the other off and flings it across the room. “Any chance of you being a good boy and keeping your hands like that while I prepare myself?” His fingers trace the seam where techno-organic metal meets flesh, purposefully teasing Nate.

Nate grunts and tries not to buck under Wade’s weight. “There’s a chance,” he replies. He loves Wade like this. Fuck, he likes Wade in any position. He wants to put his mouth and hands all over him. The fact that he can’t makes it all the more tantalizing. The fact that he’s not the one spearing Wade open with two fingers, now three, now four— _Christ, Wade—_ makes him snarl and grunt. He grabs the armrest behind his head to keep from ripping the scarf off right the fuck now.

“Easy, tiger,” pants Wade as he rocks back on his own fingers. He gives a light-fingered push to Nate’s torso. “Almost there, baby.” He groans as he no doubt scrapes his own prostate, his eyelids fluttering and his cheeks turning ruddy red.

Nate absolutely does not whine at this image.

Finally, Wade takes his other hand and grabs Nate’s cock. Removing his fingers from his ass with a _squelch_ ; he lines up Nate’s cock under him and then, like the maniac he is, takes it in all the way to the hilt in one push.

“Fuck!” shouts Nate as his body jack-knifes. The bumps and scarring inside Wade feel like lightning up and down his spine. There’s barely enough lube, but Wade’s already riding him like Apocalypse is around the corner waiting to tear him right off. Nate throws up his hands up before he realizes what he’s doing and Wade catches them with a snarl.

“My turn, Nathan,” he growls through his teeth, his pupils blown out, and it’s so unexpected that Nate lets out a choked moan. Heat coils like a serpent in his gut and it feels so good. Wade feels so good on his dick, that Nate doesn’t want it to end. He wants to stay like this forever: inside Wade, basking in his lover’s glory, on the verge of total ecstasy.

But then Wade clenches around him, coming with a scream, and Nate follows, his vision filling with stars as his body floods with heat and pleasure.

Wade collapses on top of Nate. He’s heavy and sweaty, but the weight is nice. He brings his arms down to hold Wade’s shaking frame. Then he blinks, remembering the scarf. It’s in shreds around his wrists. He taps Wade to show him and Wade gives such an ugly snort that Nate can’t help but smile.

“Promise I’ll get you a new one that makes you look even more like a hipster asshole.” Wade then tucks himself against Nate’s chest and lingers there. Nate cuddles up to him automatically.

Something warm drifts into Nate’s heart and it feels nothing like lust. He decides that it’s the warmth from the sliver of sun peeking through the window, or maybe the sticky hand that Wade curls against his chest. Nothing to worry about.

 

—

 

“Hey, buttmunch,” Aliya says.

“What.”

“When I finally kick the bucket, y’gotta not be a sadsack about it.”

 _“If,”_ Nate insists. “And you’re not.”

 _“When,”_ she laughs. “These things happen. And given the givens probably more likely to happen to me instead of to you, Mr. Messiah. Anyways I’ll let you mope a bit, but then promise me you’ll find the dick of your dreams to ride into the sunset.”

“Aliya,” he protests, “I can’t just—”

“‘Grab the chances you have,’ Nate.” She eyes him. “I gotta be your ‘greatest ally and toughest enemy’ and make you hear shit you don't wanna hear. Think of your vows.”

“You _wrote_ my vows.”

“Because otherwise they’d be terrible and do nothing for me. ‘For better or for worse’ is so boring, so _traditional.”_ She makes a face like she’s being forced to drink herbal tea. “Be grateful I fixed ‘em, and go with the goddess, Askani’son.” She waves him off like a Mother with a ritual blessing, daubing his face with lube.

“The _hell.”_

 

—

 

It keeps happening about once or twice a month, as far as Nate knows.

Sometimes Wade does it for Vanessa. Right after he mutilates himself, he takes a gun to his head and reaches for Vanessa in the afterlife. Sometimes he’s able to reach through the barrier, sometimes he’s not. He doesn’t know what happens to the dicks that don’t reach Vanessa, because they’re not in his hand when he wakes up.

Nate points out to him that leaving a chunk of flesh on someone’s doorstep is what fucked-up cats do and Wade takes personal offense to that. (It doesn’t make it less true.)

Sometimes he does it to prank Weasel. According to Wade, there’s some 2009 video involving a dick in a box that has nothing to do with how Wade goes about putting a dick in a box. But Nate supposes it tickles that macabre parts of Wade’s humor. Weasel never really says anything about it—Nate assumes out of self-preservation for his sanity—so Wade never really stops. Nate makes him start putting his bits in a baggy to save the poor post-office workers who didn’t deserve to deal with this.

“Hey, plenty of people want to handle my dick!” Wade says with obvious bravado. “Why the other day I saw this girl stealing a box of them. _‘She took a look inside—it’s my dick in a box.’_ ”

“Wade, is that just an excuse to start singing again.”

“Maaaaybe.”

The third reason is, of course, so Wade can fit into his tiny, lacy panties and be a general fucking nuisance to Nate. He really doesn’t know what to think about it. Some civilized part of him hates it, hates that Wade enjoys mutilating his own junk for the hell of it. Some practical part of him thinks that so long as the blood doesn’t stain the tile and the dicks don’t touch the other stuff in the freezer, it’s fine. And some part of him that’s lost the fucks to give finds Wade’s emasculated crotch fascinating and sexy.  

Wade’s extra careful to make sure Nate doesn’t walk in on the act anymore, and even takes to using a hot knife once to limit the blood. (They find out together that burns shrivel the nerve endings during Wade’s regrowth process, making it kind of a waste for sex.)

Then one day he opens a cooler and it’s full of Wade’s frozen cocks and he thinks, _That’s enough dicks to spread around the world_.

And he pauses.

_Wait a minute._

He waits in the armchair until Wade comes home. His hands interlocked in front of his face, he takes a deep breath as Wade drops his shit and then falls into the couch. “Wade, I don’t think it’s Apocalypse. Maybe.”

“Huh?” Wade sounds extra stupid when he’s tired. “What about Acapulco?”

Nate takes another deep breath. He feels full of ash. “I don’t think Apocalypse is responsible for all the dicks you leave to the future.”

“Okay.”

“I think it’s just you. I think we need to figure out if there’s a way that the Relics could come from this era.”

“Okay.” The silence hangs in the air for a moment and then Wade hops off the sofa and heads for the kitchen. “Do we have any more birthday-cake Oreos?”

Nate walks out the front door.

He’s halfway down the block when he hears Wade jogging behind him. He puts a hand on Nate’s shoulder and it feels like he’s been electrocuted. Nate throws it off and shoves Wade into the wall. “Hey, hey, Nate, buddy, dude, what’s the problem?”

He’s lightheaded like he’s barely breathing even though he’s pulling in lungfuls of air. He’s seeing red on the edge of his vision. Everything’s tilting a bit and he’s no longer holding Wade against the brick to lock him there, but grasping Wade to keep from falling over. Wade stays upright but doesn’t touch Nate. “You okay? Did I say something?”

Nate laughs and it’s about as warm as the day he came home to find Aliya and Hope’s corpses still smoking in their living room. “‘Did you say s—’ No, Wade, you said nothing at all and that’s the problem. That’s always the fucking problem.”

“Okay, you’re gonna have to be more specific. I thought I was perfectly supportive of the Apocalypse theory thing, should I have given you a hug or—?”

“You’ll never understand,” Nate growls. “None of you, no one in this fucking century will understand the pain we’ve endured, the fear we lived under.”

“Okay, that’s a little of a racist overstatement, pal, but—”

“In 100 years, the entire planet _burns!”_ screams Nate, the knowledge he’s been carrying for so long erupting like a tank of gas. “In 200 years, Apocalypse arrives and everything was already primed for him because the world’s population is halved, fucking _halved,_ by then. He takes over, wipes out whatever resistance is left, shatters any hope, and enslaves the rest. He makes killing and torture a sport, a fucking art form. You could build mountains with the bodies he laid to waste. He—”

“Hey, hey, hey, slow it down, buddy, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

And that’s when Nate realizes his knees are wobbling and his vision’s blurry again. _No, I’m not gonna faint this time, fuck you_. He still ends plopping his ass on the ground, slumping against the wall. Wade follows him the whole way down and holds him gently by his shoulders.

“Hey, I get it. Apocalypse is scary. Okay, scary doesn’t even begin to cover it. We’ve already had to deal with, I don’t know, lots of shit. It’s hard to keep track of the reboots. And that doesn’t even sound a fraction as bad as what Apocalypse is going to be like here, yeah?”

Nate nods weakly, trying to get a handle on his emotions and not embarrass himself further. “I’m not scared of him.” God, he’s even shaking. He can barely breathe.

“Yeah, you are, Nate. And that’s okay.” Wade lets out an exhale. “I’m scared, too. You know that, right? I’m scared as shit of what’s going to happen to me in the future, and the reason I joke and dance and do cartwheels around your serious-as-fuck warnings is because if I think about them for more than thirty seconds—” Wade squeezes Nate’s shoulders, _“—I will lose my mind._ Or whatever’s left of it.”

“You fuckwit,” mutters Nate, his laugh more of a cough as he fights back tears.

“That’s me.” Wade smiles. “Now, come on, breathe with me. In, two, three, four, five. Out, two, four, three, six.”

Nate stares vacantly into the middle space and the thing was—

 

—

 

It wasn’t even Apocalypse.

It was _Firefist._ Aliya and their daughter, in the home they made for her, looking all but nuked, firebombed. They were charred into so much meat.

The ashes were climbing up into his nose, where they made a grave in his lungs.

He couldn’t breathe.

Traveling back in time felt unreal. Like he was moving through sludge.

Past imperfect.

(He couldn’t—)

 

—

 

“—come baaaaack.”

Something that smells like fuzz and dick and come pokes at his cheek.

Nate refocuses his eyes to see Wade cheerfully making the unicorn kiss Nate all over his face. He lets Wade’s voice roll over him and wallows in the man’s soothing presence as he thinks.

Maybe Wade’s morbidity is rubbing off on Nate, but he starts to wonder how Wade’s dicks last so far into the future. He’s seen the rotten remains from when Wade last decided to chuck his penis into the trash can and then leave for a week-long bounty hunt. Wade’s dicks decay at the same rate as any human flesh, so it can’t be a natural thing. Freezing them only slows the process. Liquid nitrogen makes them brittle and smooth. Drying causes them to deflate and become tough and chewy like jerky.

Honestly, he doesn’t know what process could make human flesh durable enough. Somehow he doubts Apocalypse has the patience to dunk a hundred of Wade’s cocks into plastic. (Unless he really wanted trophies. Nate tries not to think of what he’s seen in Apocalypse’s abandoned fortresses, what he takes when he moves and what he leaves behind as _garbage.)_ And he _needs_ the Relics to have come from this era; he needs to have Apocalypse have no hand in their creation. He needs Wade to… to be alright.  

Nate asks Wade to ask Vanessa what happens to the penises that don’t make it to her (and the ones that do). Everytime Wade dies, he forgets. When Nate finally staples a post-it to Wade’s head so that he can get through directly to Vanessa, Wade reports that she says she doesn’t know but they don’t stick around long and seem to get lost in the fabric of space-time.

“So what I’m hearing is that somewhere in history, some poor fuck is getting rained on with my dicks,” says Wade gleefully.

“It may explain a few medieval illuminations, to be honest,” Neena says.

“When did you get here?!” Wade does a full body double-take.

“Three minutes ago,” Nate says, aggrieved. “But look, even if they traveled in time, they would probably decompose at the usual rate. So we still don’t know if the Relics appeared sometime this century or if it happened sometime after the world fell.”

“I really love that I can hear you Capitalize my dick, every time,” Wade says dreamily.

“Why is it so important to you, anyway?” Domino leans her cheek against a fist, staring Nate down.

“Just is,” Nate says, giving his words the heavy gravitas that the situation merits.

“Mmmmhm.” Domino raises an eyebrow.

Weasel wanders into the bar’s storage area that they were using as a war room. He’s chewing obnoxiously and eyes them, carrying a box, “What’re y’all doing here? I should charge rent.”

“The X-Force is a charitable non-profit dedicated to ‘saving the children’ with vast amounts of murder and mayhem and you can totally make it a tax write-off,” Wade chirrups.

Nate’s eyes narrow. “Where’d you get that box?”

“Like I said,” Weasel says, grabbing something from the box and shoving it into his mouth, “I should charge rent. I’m stealing your jerky Wade, suck it.”

Nate grimaces as the dumbass falls over laughing, grabbing at his sides, barely getting out the words, _“No, I think you got there first.”_

Domino, who’d been peering into the box, suddenly blanches and backpedals away until she’s pretty much left the room, calling out from the doorway, “Okay, there’s crazy, and then there’s _white people crazy._ That’s _it._ I’m out.”

 _This century is so pampered,_ Nate thinks, _to throw away so much meat._ “Weasel, what’re you doing with those dicks Wade’s sending you?”

“What? The asshole’s still doing that?”

Nate frowns. “He’s been sending them here for the past six months. I’ve watched him drop ‘em off at the post office.”

“Well, I haven’t gotten any dick-in-a-box since like, a year or two ago.”

Wade lets out a peal of laughter.

Weasel ignores him, “He claimed _that_ one was accidental. But now I’m really not fucking sure—”

“Did you keep it?”

Weasel blinks. “Are you seriously asking me if I kept Wade Wilson’s dismembered fucking penis as a souvenir?”

At which point Wade just goes off into another round of uncontrollable giggles, singing, “ _Eat it~ Eat ittttt~ No one wants to be def-Eated.”_

“Because the answer is hell-to-the-fuck-no, what the fuck is wrong with you, both of you, never ask me that again.”

_Hmmm._

Nate exits the bar, thinking through possibilities, leaving Wade and Weasel behind him.

Wade starts talking.

As he’s walking away, a high-pitched shriek echoes out of the building and a familiar box _explodes_ through a closed window, dick-jerky and glass flying all over the sidewalk.

 _What a waste of food,_ he mentally scoffs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [here, have some penis trees.](http://discardingimages.tumblr.com/post/58054390063/nuns-and-the-penis-tree-roman-de-la-rose-france)


	3. nice to meat you

The next time Wade sends a dick Weasel’s way, he asks Dopinder to keep an eye out for it. When the tracking number claims delivery, he calls Dopinder. 

_ Nothing arrived, sir. _

The time after that, Nate stakes out the bar on the date of delivery. 

It never shows. 

The third time, Nate hides a tracker in the box and waits. He watches the signal move to the post office’s central processing center, shuffle around the city, then back to the center. 

And from there, to outside the city. He looks up the coordinates and finds a warehouse in New Jersey.

_ Of course it’s Jersey,  _ he can imagine Wade saying with a fond sigh.

The next morning, he rises early—Wade doesn’t even stir when he leaves him a gentle kiss on the forehead—and takes the truck out to the coordinates, the bed full of guns. He’s only collecting intel so didn’t bother with his normal kit; whoever is careless enough to not detect a basic tracker in a cardboard box probably doesn’t have a sophisticated operation or is at least too arrogant to think that anyone’s caught on to their doings. If he has to start a fight, he’s probably not going to lose. Besides, he has his phone if shit hits the fan.

He winds up in an industrialized section that he doesn’t think qualifies as part of any town. The air reeks of petrochemicals and smog and other pollutants that people of this century no longer seem to notice. The warehouse itself looks like it hasn’t seen human activity in years. It’s large and empty; its windows coated in dust and the concrete is more cracked than not. 

He parks a few blocks away. 

He decides to take only an M16, a PSG1 for the telescopic sight, and two 9mm pistols for his first stakeout. No need to break out the big guns. He scales the roof of an old office park diagonally across from the warehouse. 

From the vantage point, signs of hidden activity reveal themselves. There’s a car tucked under a tarp next to an old boiler. Wires poke out of the building and connect to a gas generator humming away. The rusted front door has a fresh padlock and thick set of chains that are undone. There’s also at least one camera by the side door, and he suspects a sensor on the generator.

Nate camps there for about two hours, as the sun gets higher in the sky and the concrete hot to touch, before a side door opens. 

A young blonde woman walks out, locking the door behind her, and then walks around to lock the front sliding door. She’s pale, chubby, and wearing glasses—not much of a threat. He watches her get in her car and drive out the open back gate. He counts to a hundred. Then he counts to a hundred again. When he doesn’t hear any more activity, he climbs down from his perch and creeps in the back gate. 

It doesn’t take much to disable the camera and he masks his presence to the sensor by the generator. It’s a pretty sizable one; he’s researched some himself and he knows you can’t get this type at a hardware store. So whatever is going on here is not civilian.

Well, nothing’s ever simple when it comes to Wade.

His scanner registers only low-value heat signatures inside. He raises his pistol and bursts through the side door. 

He’s met with silence. 

No one else here. 

He keeps his pistol raised, his heart rate pumping. It’s cavernous. Dust choked. Half of the oversized warehouse is junk mixed with old computer tech and a shitload of paper. The other half is obscured with semi-transparent plastic sheets hanging from the rafters. He decides to check that half out first.

It’s a clean workroom made up to be a lab. He recognizes some of it. There are tissue cultures growing in Petri dishes, fuckloads of other lab tech, and a whiteboard with a bunch of chemical equations and other gibberish and—oh fuck.

In big letters, all capitalized:  _ WADE WILSON’S HEALING FACTOR _ .

A massive fridge sits humming next to the wall. 

Nate’s pretty sure he knows what he’s going to find in there. It’s equipped with a more sophisticated lock, but Nate’s arm bypasses the codes and opens it. 

Yup, racks and racks of Wade’s bagged dicks, all labeled by date and colored tabs. 

Wade’s mentioned that he’s never worried about people using his limbs for black market organs or research. According to Beast, his healing factor is tied to his multiple aggressive cancers, therefore anyone getting a Wade Wilson organ transplant would also get his cancer. 

_ “I can kill people in so many ways,” _ Wade had said brightly.

So someone here managed to bypass the cancer, or they’re doing something else. But what else would there be? What do you need Wade’s healing factor for if you couldn’t get rid of the canc—?

_ Oh. _

And sure enough, there’s a plastic airlock just outside what looks like an old walk-in freezer. It’s a zip-up plastic-tarp set-up, so Nate unzips it, unlocks the heavy lead-lined freezer door, and walks in.

“What the  _ fuck _ .”

Strapped to a big metal board inside a glass tank, pale and smooth and sickly-looking, is another Wade Wilson.

Then a cloth claps over Nate’s mouth and he takes a panicked breath like an idiot and tumbles into darkness.

 

—

 

_ Grab the chances you have, Nate. _

The first time Nate gets Wade’s pants off, he stares. 

He feels his eyes growing wide and his hands come up to hover around that scarred dick, trembling. Nate only saw Wade’s legs naked that time they were growing back and he’d been flashed by baby smooth balls and dick. He was under the impression that Wade’s impressive scarring was confined to his upper body. 

Nate never dared to think that the texture of Wade’s face extended all over.

“So I know it’s kinda Lovecraftian down there, but you could really cut down on the death stare, y’know, if you want my Cthulhu to come out and play.”

Nate doesn’t know what to make of those words, let alone Wade’s sarcasm. He’s too focused on what he’s seeing. Which is that he  _ has _ to be wrong. His eyes must be playing tricks on him. 

He  _ knows _ this dick.

“You know what, we could have a rain check here—”

Nate puts his mouth on the base and  _ breathes. _

“Oooor that. You could do that t—hoooo  _ fuck!” _

He slides his lips down the hardening length. And with them, he examines the warmth, the texture, the girth. It’s devastatingly familiar.

_ This can’t be—  _

He holds as much of it as he can in his mouth for a moment, another moment, relishing the weight of it, ignoring Wade’s babble, and then feels at it with his tongue, his lips, his hands, trying to  _ remember. _ Difficult because Wade’s being a noisy and squirming distraction.

Nate leans back suddenly and yanks the pants off the rest of Wade’s legs, tipping him onto the bed, shoving his own clothes away with a combination of hands and TK and yanking the lube towards him with it too. Breaks the whole thing open on that cock. Slicks it down with a tight fist, and he  _ knows _ this dick.

_ Great Mothers, it can’t be. _

He swings a leg over Wade’s hips, and Wade stares up at him, eyes uncertain and a little broken, “I mean the comics certainly didn’t say you were apt to stick a pole up your behind but—” 

Nate shoves two lubed fingers into himself briefly, then lines himself up.

“—don’t get me wrong, I’m  _ living _ for it and wonder how much of that is due to your heig— _ holy fucktight wowshiiiit—”  _

Nate slowly works himself open on Wade’s cock. It’s not smooth or easy, but he bounces it into himself in millimeters, relaxing into the pressure, sighing himself loose at the sensations.

It’s a familiar stretch. He knows this.  _ He’s done this before. _ He stares up at the ceiling and the sight of it blurs as he lets himself sink down and bottom out and, and. And.

The inside of his chest is a riot at the realization. The  _ one _ person in this death spiral of a century that reminds him of home, that fights with him like they’re dancing, that fights  _ against _ him like they’re having  _ sex, _ who is gorgeous and honorable and shocks him into something resembling  _ himself _ again and not simply a ball of grief, is the one person that Nate has some evidence of what his future looks like.

And Wade’s future looks to be an eon of pain.

“...like you’ve just seen the face of go— _ ” _

“I need to tell you something,” Nate interrupts Wade’s babbling, his ass flush to Wade’s hips, sweating with pleasure and the need to get his words out. “You should know about these fucktoys we used to have. In the future.” 

“Is this  _ really _ the best time?”

“You bet your dick it is.”

 

—

 

Nate comes to with a headache, sick to his stomach, and tied with thick, steel chains to a column in the middle of a large room. He can’t find the lock when he follows the links up with his gaze, so it’s either hidden or the chains have been soldered together. The chains themselves wind up the weight bearing post and are woven into the struts near the ceiling. Pulling at them would bring the entire roof down over his head. His scarf is stuffed in his mouth as an improvised gag. He wishes he could rip it with his teeth like a dog, but he knows from experience it’s not going to break.

There’s only one other person in the facility. 

The blonde woman who locked the warehouse up earlier now stands in front of a thigh-high refrigerator. She grabs a soda, shuts the fridge, grabs a plastic bag on the counter and walks out of the lab. She sits down at a folding table and chair directly in front of Nate, taking a plastic container out of the bag and opening it. A rich savory smell rises with the steam. 

It appears to be some kind of fresh noodle soup.

She doesn’t appear to notice Nate until she looks up with tired eyes. “Oh, you’re up.” She digs into her soup, chews the piece of meat hanging from her lips. The generator hums outside and the refrigerators hum in the lab. Once she’s finished chewing, she says, “I’m, uh— you’re actually my first hostage so sorry if, uh, all those are uncomfortable.”

Nate blinks at her.

“I don’t even have a gun here, uh, aside from yours.” She laughs nervously. “I do have a phone though.” She holds up a burner phone, similar to Nate’s own phone sitting in his truck. “And I’m supposed to report any, uh, trespassers to my employers. I’d rather not. They’ll probably, definitely kill you, and possibly me. They, uh—they really don’t want anyone to know what I’m doing here.”

She takes another bite of the beef chunks in her soup. “So maybe if you,” she says with her mouth full, “Jus’ go and promise not to tell anyone? You’re a bounty hunter, right? You look like one. I can give you my next advance, it’s like $5,000. Okay?”

Nate considers swallowing his fucking scarf right there and then. Wade will never let him live this down.

“Your, uh, arm’s pretty cool by the way. I thought it was a weird cyborg interface at first, especially since there’s, uh, blood flowing through the, uh, pipes? But it’s a growth, yeah? I saw it move a bit in your sleep.

_ Fuck. _ The other reason he hates getting knocked out: if he doesn’t sleep or meditate consciously, his telepathic barriers to the virus weaken. And he doesn’t know how long he was knocked out for.  _ Fuck. _

“I took a sample of it.” That whips Nate’s head around. “It seems to react to organic material, so I put it in glass—”

**Burn it** , he screams telepathically into her head. She jumps out of her chair, her soup toppling onto the floor.  **You dumb fucking shit, you have no idea what the fuck you’ve done—**

“Hello, hi, sir.” The woman’s holding a gun now—his pistol—and has the phone to her ear. “Yeah, uh I have a trespasser here. I’m holding him, but he’s a mutant. Can you—Thank you. Okay. Understood. Okay.”

She hangs up, puts the phone in her pocket, and holds the pistol in a double-handed grip. Her breathing is shaky. “They’ll be here in an hour. I’m sorry.”

**Take the gag off** , he thinks at her.

“Why? Can’t you just speak to me like this?”

**Not for long. Need the energy to keep this from spreading.** When she hesitates, he rolls his eyes.  **Please** . 

Amazingly, she does so after casting a long nervous look at him. She carefully points the gun downward and uses one hand to pull out the scarf, her fingers jumpy like she’s afraid he’ll bite. He’s tempted, but he doesn’t. Askani preserve him, he needs her help to get out of this.

“Okay,” he says, his voice scratchy, “burn whatever you cut off me. Needs to be hot enough to melt iron. And don’t touch it without gloves.”

“Why?” She keeps the gun tracked on him.

“Because what’s on my arm is a virus. A deadly, painful virus that converts organic tissue into tech. I keep it in check with my powers. Normal humans like you will die within 30 minutes of contraction.”

“Okay, I wouldn’t believe you, except I saw what it did to a lettuce lead earlier—”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Yeah, okay, this is way above my pay grade and I really don’t like apocalyptic diseases—” 

_ You have no idea, girl _ .

“—so, uh, don’t go anywhere.”

She runs, presses a few buttons on a machine that throws heat even from a distance, grabs the round glass cylinder that contains the virus using tongs and thick mittens, and throws it inside the machine. A psychic hurt lances through him and Nate chokes back a cry. But within five minutes, the acute pain dulls, dulls, dulls, and then ceases. 

“Okay, is it dead?” the woman asks. He nods. “Now what?”

“No way to call off your goons, huh?”

“Don’t think so. They’ll get suspicious.”

“What the fuck do they want with Wade anyway? Why’d they make you start this?”

“Wade? Oh, Deadpool. They didn’t start this, I did. I just needed, uh, funding. They wanted me to grow them a, um, Deadpool of their own. I was already studying him through his... discards.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s fascinating! His healing factor is one of the strongest in the world. Did you know he’s effectively immortal? Current estimates are that he’ll probably outlive the sun, maybe longer.” 

Nate starts, a bit thrown that he’s a bit thrown at the idea. He knows that Wade can heal from what looks like anything so long as his mutation is active, but he’s seen Wade die before. Nate had to time travel again to save him, he thought that Wade needed… he doesn’t know what he thought. 

“And it’s almost entirely thanks to his cancer. His body has the keys to immortality and he just throws them in his dumpster. Well, uh,  _ he _ doesn’t. The garbage men do or the old woman who lives with him does, or his wife used to… And now, sometimes, you.” 

Nate knows he doesn’t want to outlive Wade, but hadn’t considered the full implications of Wade outliving  _ him.  _ Outliving everyone. 

But then, Wade already outlived his wife.

_ Oh. _

Nate knows what that’s like. 

“Stop being so stingy!” She pushes up her glasses. “Anyway, Deadpool’s cells want to regrow, they want to fix what was broken. The problem is that they’re, uh, pretty dumb. They rely on the brain to grow properly and they need enough energy to get going at all. Otherwise, you’d have a dozen full-grown Deadpools running around every time he loses so much as a finger.” She throws up a hand in the universal gesture of  _ duh _ . 

Nate twitches at the idea of Wade fruiting like slime molds or TO. 

“Sooo if you simulate the electrical impulses of both the brain and cancer cells, and feed them enough glucose and proteins, you can make those cells grow whatever you want. Sometimes it gets confused, but I’ve managed to perfect it. The frequency at which Deadpool is severing his, um, parts definitely helps. I just have to get the starter organ into my freezer before its cells lose all regeneration ability. Otherwise, it’s just...meat.”

Something plucks at Nate’s mind. “And what do you do with the meat?”

Yup, the look of childish delight confirms his suspicions. “Oh, you’ll never guess.”

“Oh,” he says with a grimace, briefly wishing to brain himself against the pipe, “I think I might.”

She seems to ignore him. “I studied plastination from Gunther von Hagens himself. Well, a disciple of his. Do you know what it is?” 

Nate refuses to answer her but she steamrolls on.

“You replace the water and fats in organic tissue with synthetic polymers. Before that, scientists missed out on whole organs due to dehydrating and freezing their samples. Von Hagens turned it into the whole BodyWorlds exhibit thing. I’d love to do something like that one day with parts of Deadpool’s body, maybe even a whole body?” 

Nate snarls.

“Would a version of him survive the experience? What polymers would it take? I don’t know yet, but I’ve been practicing—”

“On his discarded penises,” finishes Nate grimly.

She blinks. “How do you know about—was it just from my freezer?”

“That, and he’s filled  _ our _ own fucking freezer with his junk. And you’re never going to plasticate—”

“Plastinate.”

“ _ I don’t fucking give a shit _ . You’re never doing  _ that _ to his body while I’m still around.”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean—not the original’s body, of course, that would be—yeah, bad. I, uh, kinda failed the ethics course in college. The professor said I had a brain like a serial killer on my final paper.”

“You’re really not helping your case here.” 

“Yeah, sorry, I promise I won’t plastinate the original Deadpool. Not that it matters, because, uh, you’ll be dead soon.”

“No, I won’t.”

“No, you will. My employers are, uh, very thorough, and very secretive—”

“Yeah, but they don’t have what I have.”

“Which is?”

Nate left his phone in his car for a good reason: if he didn’t get back to it by noon, it would send a text out with his coordinates. Combined with the fact that he didn’t leave Wade a note explaining what he was doing and took at least half of their gun supply with them… well.

“What time is it?”

She blinks. “Uh, 12:49. Why?”

He smiles like a shark. “I don’t think your employers will get here in time.” 

And that’s when the lights go out.

Even the background noise of air conditioners go quiet.

The doors explode inwards, setting off a huge cloud of dust that flies up and makes the hot noon sunbeams  _ glitter. _ They backlit a figure striding towards them in the darkness, trailing shadows. 

Light scatters around him like a tilted halo.

_ “Ronald Weasley!” _ shouts Deadpool as he struts—yes, fucking  _ struts— _ into the laboratory. “How dare you steal my car and my guns, I am absolutely disgusted and—who the fuck is this?”

The woman looks like she’s about to faint. “Uh, Whitby, Ella. I’m. Ella Whitby. You’re not supposed to be here, they’re definitely going to kill me now.”

“Good to see you, Wade,” says Nate, and he means it. God, does he mean it. Wade walks through those doors both a ridiculous and a monstrous vision of seductive destruction, and it’s something Nate always wants to be present for.

He suddenly knows he’s never going to want to let go. “There’s more people coming according to her. Her employers, she claims. And there’s—”

A crash comes from the darkness. It sounds very distinctly of some freezers being knocked over and an angry person searching for weaponry.

“Eh?” Wade cranes his head over.

“Um,” says Ella with a distinct edge of  _ ‘oh shit’. _

“You’re kidding me,” Nate mutters.

A wall of boxes collapses, like a curtain dramatically falling open. They reveal a preternaturally still male form, chalk white.

Ella dashes to hide behind Nate’s shoulder, peering over it. “Uh. So you cut the power… all power?  _ Freezer _ power?”

The head turns towards them as if creaking on a dowel. As before, the first thing that hits Nate is the familiar lines of Wade’s cheekbones and jaw. The second, which had initially caused Nate to freeze in shock and horror, is the realization that this version of Wade has no mouth. As if someone had gotten upset and erased his mouth from existence.  

Nate smothers the urge to strangle Ella. Wade’s voice and words are so much the core of the man and Ella - or her employer - decided to discard them and make Wade into a compliant weapon. No wonder NotPool stalks towards them with murder in his eyes.

A slow grin warps Deadpool’s mask as he stares at his not!self. “Hey, team. You know that urge you get sometimes where you just wanna punch yourself in the face?”

“Wade?”

“Papa’s busy, honey, give me a moment to abuse myself.” His swords unsheathe with a shivery  _ snnnickkkk, _ as he moves into an anticipatory prowl.

NotPool’s eyes fill with interest and he draws his swords out as well. Starts striding forward.

“Uh, um, is he really gonna—”

Swords clash together.

“...I. Um, I really want popcorn. Wow.” She shifts around a lot over his shoulder and Nate really hopes she isn’t touching herself given what he’s reading off her via telepathy. 

Wade is cackling gleefully and there’s a terrific  _ squelch. “Hey!” _

A chalky form flies over their head to slam into the post Nate’s tied to. The windows shake with the impact. The clone slides down a bit, then the other Deadpool seems to quickly get his bearing and jump horizontally off from it to land behind Nate.

He dives for Ella, who dodges around the pole.

“Stop fucking around! We can’t get out of here until he’s dead!” Nate shouts to Wade, as Not!Pool nearly slices his ear off trying to reach Ella.

“Awww but I’m having fun with myself!” Wade crashes into the clone and the both go into the depths of the warehouse like feuding cats.

“Then finish already!” he shouts back. “Or does your dick need Viagra?”

There’s a long moment of grunts and various sounds of impacts and metal meeting flesh. “...maybe?”

Ah. He’s having trouble. “Ella! How do you deactivate the clones?” 

She stares back at Nate with continued hesitance but then Not!Pool flies back out of the darkness to rush at her again, Wade hot on his tail. 

“The head!” she screams as she dodges another blow from Not!Pool as Wade slams into his clone from behind. “The head controls the healing factor so without it, he should die for good!” 

“Roger, roger!” Wade kicks Not!Pool back several feet. “I’ll aim for the head. You work on getting us a quick exit.”

Ella grabs a hefty set of bolt cutters and manages to cut through the presumably soldered (and weaker) links in the chain. Once they’re loose enough, he pulls the chains off and grabs Ella by the arm as he crouches down. 

“Stay close.” Cable digs deep into his telekinesis and feels for the structural pillars holding the roof overhead. He doesn’t have time to find the weak points, the effort’s already sapping his strength, so he rips through them instead. 

The entire warehouse, over fifty thousand pounds of high-grade steel and concrete, falls on them within seconds.

“Nathan, you motherfuck—!”

Nate stretches his shield over Ella with some strain, giving her an unimpressed look of  _ ‘You owe me one’ _ . When the last of the building settled, he shoves everything off them and starts looking around.

“Any way to leave the area discreetly, d’you know?”

“Um, over here. Can you shift this metal away?”

Wade eventually wanders over covered in gore with a satisfied sigh, carrying the head of NotPool. He eyeballs Nate as he’s shouldering aside some iron bars.

“Wow, what a convenient sewage system. The authors definitely weren’t looking for a contrived way to get us out of that warehouse without having to fight all the baddies that were on their way.”

“It was an abandoned meat factory, internal drainage systems were required,” explains Ella. 

“Like I said,” Wade chirrups. “Let’s bounce.”

Nate collapses the tunnels behind them as they go.

 

—

 

“Have you thought about it?”

“Hm?”

They’re watching Ella be escorted into Avengers tower, Captain America in her ear and Tony Stark striding after, rapidly talking on the phone. The threat of multiple Wade Wilsons was apparently enough to make this Someone Else’s Problem; the Avengers will take care of her debriefing, plus looking into whoever employed her. They tried the X-Mansion first but couldn’t find a responsible adult, not even when Wade went around shouting for someone. And they certainly weren’t going to let the kids handle Ella. Nor Piotr for that matter, who would take her at face value and probably fold in the face of her sociopathic earnestness.

“Immortality. Have you thought—”

“—about the fact that I’m likely to outlive every single person I ever meet ever until someone finds a way to overcome my cancer’s voracious sex drive or the heat death of the universe comes?” 

Nate looks over at Wade, whose face is inscrutable behind his mask.

“Only when I’m on heroin.”

“I haven’t seen you on heroin.”

“Exactly.”

Nate’s quiet for a bit. “I don’t know what happens to you in the future,” he says, giving voice to another secret he’s been holding back since he met Wade. “I haven’t heard of someone like you, but that could just mean you’re not in the Americas.”

“Yeah, maybe I’m too busy Mad Max-ing it in ‘stralia to pick up a techno-organic soldier with no appreciation for dubstep.”

“Maybe.” Nate only really understood the back half of that sentence. “I hope so.”

“So what should I do if I meet ‘you’ in the future, after, you know,” Wade gives a series of gesticulations that probably meant Nate’s death. “After  _ this _ century’s ‘you’ just...”

At that moment, Nate feels the love for his wife acutely. How fucking brave she was to have this conversation with him, to give him permission to live after she was gone. To say it so bluntly, so clearly, so selflessly; everything Nate’s finding now so incredibly difficult. Everything Wade’s struggling with.

How hard it is to stay with someone, knowing that eventually— inevitably— you’ll be the one to leave them, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

Wade takes his silence completely wrong, per usual. “You’ll probably be with your wife by then, yeah? So never mind, forget I said anything just— _ mmmmph!” _

Nate had to reach for him. 

Wade clutches him back. 

His grip is tight.

_

 

_**Epilogue** _

Nate goes over to stare at Wade in consternation as they’re wrapping up the mission. The X-Force had been roped into being ‘consultants’ for the Xmen, if by consultation you meant, ‘We can’t handle the amount of wetwork involved so please assist in a way that won’t come back to stain our image.’

So they came, they saw, they “smeared the opposition across the pavement, yeah!” 

He’s managed to shield Wade for most of the sortie but the dipshit managed to get himself cut in half. Again.

“Go, team! Low five!” Wade reaches a hand up. Nate slaps his palm to it, then grips it to haul up the bloody torso and tuck it under one arm.

“What happened to ‘low key’.”

“Have you  _ met me? _ Which is, granted, a good way for Prof Baldy to cover his ass for potentially messy missions because he knows how I roll but—Hey! Don’t leave my ass behind.”

“I’m literally holding—”

“No no, I mean my actual ass.”

Nate pauses. Looks down. Wade looks up at him and childishly points at the detached lower part of his body flopped over a car three feet away.

He feels a tic forming below his eye. “Because?”

“Because Reasons? I mean you can chop off the legs for ease of transport, but come on, Nate, think of poor Ella.”

“You mean  _ rich _ Ella,” Nate grumps.

_ Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.  _ After all the events unfolded, Nate wasn’t willing for Ella to go around without oversight and Wade was… far too entertained.

The idiot fucktoy ended up hiring her and patenting a line of adult toys after himself. Silicone ‘replicas’, Wade called it in the trademark paperwork. And granted, while Deadpool LTD really did offer lower end toys made from various cheaper materials (both the ‘Son’ and the ‘Holy Spirit’ sizing of their best seller appeared only in silicone and resin) most of The Relic model (in ‘Daddy’ size) made from ‘secret patented materials’ were sourced from... the source. 

("Spread my dick far and yonder, Ella!")

"For fuck's sake." Nate would facepalm but his hands are full with Wade and Wade’s gear and boots. “Can’t I cut off your dick and bring just that?”

Wade looks shifty-eyed.

“Wade.”

“Okay,  _ look _ , I feel like Deadpool LTD’s offerings are really one note! We need to diversify! I’ve been getting Ella some of my fingers and the buttplugs she’s been making from them are to die for.”

“...buttplugs.”

“The Blessing model is selling like hotcakes!” Wade hums. “There’s even been some takers for the Hand of God.”

“And  _ this?” _ Nate’s TK had been taking care of removing the legs, so now he was just shaking Wade’s own dumb ass in the dipshit’s own dumb face.

“Wow, I didn’t know I was that jiggly. Anyways, I know that you’re very new to the 21st, Nate, but cocksleeves are a Thing. I’m thinking of calling it The Liturgy.”

“You’re going to make—” Nate doesn’t know why he’s surprised anymore.

“Well, limited edition mostly! Though Ella’s gonna grab a mold of this, probably, so we can distribute it in other materials.”

“So that people can fuck your ass without knowing it’s you.”

“It’s like some of the best parts of a glory hole and a masquerade orgy put together, with no effort on my part!” Wade looks up at him brightly.

Nate sighs, rolls his eyes, shifting Wade’s torso to a better grip.  _ For better or for worse.  _ He feels a distinct clarity fall upon him. The kind of clarity he only felt once before. Before he can stop himself, convince himself to wait, it falls out of his mouth: “I promise to be your lover, companion, and friend.”

Wade goes still. 

Nate takes the opportunity to start heading to their transport.

“Wait, wait, wait, hold up,  _ back _ up, needle scratch. What did you just say?!”

“Did I stutter?”

There’s a long silence as they enter the X-Force plane. Domino and Colossus look at them curiously from their seats. Dopinder is craning his head around the pilot seat to stare. 

Nate’s looking around for someplace he could set Wade’s ass. 

It’s strange to have Wade so quiet for so long.

“...Your partner in... parenthood?” Wade tentatively suggests at last, to the floor, still hanging from Nate’s arm. “Not that we can have kids, and let’s be real Negasonic Teenage Asshole is my little sis, but adoption is there, once we settle down—”

“Your ally in conflict,” interrupts Nate evenly.

“Your greatest fan and your toughest enemy,” replies Wade with a manic grin.

It’s like they’re in a shared trance. The words fall out even easier than either the first time Nate repeated this (mostly because Aliya never gave him the chance to properly memorize them beforehand) or the second time he remembered it out-loud, to Wade. In Wade’s eyes, he finds her. In Wade’s voice, he hears his wife. He doesn’t know what Wade hears from him, but he seems just as mesmerized.

“Your comrade in adventure.”

“Your student and your teacher.”

“Your consolation in disappointment.”

“Your accomplice in mischief.” The waggle in Wade’s brows makes Nate laugh. Honest to the Mothers, he laughs, his heart dancing on clouds.

“This is my sacred vow to you,” they say together and this time Nate swears he can hear at least one woman’s voice in the echo, “my equal in all things.”

“All things,” Nate repeats to himself softly. “But I don’t have a legal identity in your era.”

“No paperwork.” Wade agrees faintly. He doesn’t stop staring at Nate, nor does he stop grinning. “Butt.”

“But?

“No, ‘butt’. Like, as in, mine. You’re already hauling my ass around.”

“Yep.” Literally in this case. Nate finally wraps the bloody meat up in a tarp and sets it on the seat next to them, placing Wade on his lap.

“Okay, look, if the Avengers cock this up again, which I don’t know that they will because  _apparently_ Thanos only exists in this universe in a non-purple, techno-organic form and thinks I’m the best thing to rub his dick against, so who _knows_ if a Civil War is even gonna happen to us, so, I’m just saying that if we ever even _think_ of getting a divorce that we get a marriage counselor first and send Stark the bill. _Comprende?”_

“...insomuch as any of that made sense, sure.” Nate nods.

“CONGRATULATIONS, MR. AND MR. POOL!” Dopinder shouts. Colossus echoes him more quietly.

“Good luck with that,” Domino says to Nate, amused. He’ll take that as a blessing.

“Thanks.” Nate feels a corner of his mouth twitching up. 

“You know, I think my dick is like 95% of the reason why you’re marrying me.”

Wade elaborates his point but Nate doesn’t interrupt; he thinks it over instead, letting Wade’s soothing voice register faintly as he turns over his memories, looking them over in earnest. 

“You’re not wrong,” he says at last and Wade crows in victory.

 

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Not!Pool photo reference :)](https://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2018/05/17/17-deadpool-x-men.w710.h473.jpg) (if he had a mouth he'd be saying _I lived, bitch_ )
> 
> Outtakes next chapter. Thank you guys so much, we hope you had as much fun reading this as we did writing this! - ladysassafrass


	4. the reDickening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Outtakes and other things that didn't end up in the fic

The hell of it is, Aliya remembers to laugh.

In this wasteland of a world that they live in, where no one could imagine a past without scarring or pain, could not imagine a future without even more scars and more pain, Aliya seems only to egg it on. Invite it in, with bared teeth and a smile.

“What are you wearing?” Nate sputtered the first time they slept together.

“What, don’t you like it,” she shot back.

It's this... this pristine dress _thing,_ soft and somehow white. Completely impractical and absurd and Nate can’t wrap his brain around it. Why isn’t she wearing something sensible in carbon-fiber nanoweave or fluorocoated healing mesh? Something that you can run in and fight in. Normal sleepwear. Or even in the nude.

“Do you have a deathwish or something?”

A strange expression crossed her face, “The world hasn’t managed it, even if I did.” She barks a laugh, “And I have too much of a self-preservation instinct. Call it my superpower or something, I don’t know. I feel like they’d have to nuke me at this point to keep me down.” Her mouth twists somehow wry and bitter.

“Most people would like to have ‘staying alive’ as a superpower.”

“Most people are incompetent.” She shrugged, eyes slid away, shoulders tense, “And then they die on you and it’s your fault and people hate you, and _anyways,_ its overrated. Scars are cool.”

He barked a laugh, “What, you want this disease?”

“Haven’t caught it yet,” the side of her mouth quirked up. “Hey, do you think it’s sexually transmissible?”

Nate knew it’s not, but is slightly taken aback that she felt like the possibility is a perk. That his danger to her is a _perk_ rather than a deterrent, that he’s just more of the death that she seeks to challenge. There was something in him that wants to prove her wrong, on all accounts. Wanted her to stay impractical and absurd and nonsensical; wanted her near. “You’re going to have to test it out yourself, I think.”

“Well then call me the outlet to your cable, Mr. Askani’son.” Aliya lifted up the crisp white edge of her dress and beneath it she was wearing, dear mothers, pale pink underwear with cloth woven like metal filigree, insanely delicate, and so sheer he could see the plump reddened lips of her wetting the fabric.

It was foolish. Decadently depraved.

“I’m gonna ruin it.” Nate’s mouth was dry.

“That is, in fact, the point,” she leered.

 

—

 

Wade gives him a scarf the next day. Nate doesn’t wear it because it’s already warm out.

His face and neck are already too hot.

For some reason that makes Wade coo, the dumbass.

 

—

 

Nate had decided over the course of that night that she was the one. Two months later, which was twice over an aeon in terms of the usual courtship lengths, Nate proposed to her as soon as they got behind a solid bulkhead. She was drenched in various bloody fluids, none of it hers, and unnameable offal squelched beneath her boots.

“I told them if they said that again they’d end up with my foot up their—”

“Aliya, marry me.”

“—nd with salt of their tears for lube. Wait— what? Nate?”

“Marry me.”

  

—

 

[When the X-Men met Ella]

“So she’s not a mutant.”

“Nope.”

“But she knows too much about Wade Wilson.”

“Yep.”

“Can I just say how wonderful it is that you finally showed up in this universe?” natters Wade. “Like this is what it takes to bring the Professor out of his hiding place: the threat of multiple Wade Wilsons. Never mind that my dumbass beta version didn’t even survive a beheading-”

“I was pressed for time and money!” retorts Ella, who seems to share with Wade an acute lack of self-preservation.

“You sewed my clone’s mouth shut!” Wade shouts right back.

“‘Bout damn time,” says Wolverine.

“And what the balls are you doing here, Wolvie, huh?” Wade jabs his finger in the direction of Logan, who’s leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and looking like he wants to bite that finger. “You’re not even supposed to be in this continuity! Not yet at least.”

“So we’ve determined,” continues Professor X, rubbing his temples like he’s warding off a headache, “that you, Ms. Eleanor Whitby, are somewhat of a threat to the mutant community, but not a mutant yourself. Therefore, we can’t keep you here, but letting you free poses some… problems.”

“The biggest threat she poses is releasing some half-assed Bethesda version of me glitching down the street,” grumbles Wade.

“I’m gonna get better!” Ella shoots back.

“Will you both shut the fuck up?” snarls Nate. “Professor, I have the solution to your problem.”

“Do you now?” Charles seems amused. Nate feels the telepathic inquiries gently push into his mind and he doubles up his mental walls.

“I do.” **Rude** , he thinks at Professor X, who blinks and then nods in deference. “Send her with us.”

“Yeah, fat fuckin’ chance,” says Wolverine.

“I have to agree with the Wolverine here.” Hank McCoy stands by the Professor looking snobbish as fuck. Nate bristles looking at the fucker. “She’s a danger to society and has already done illegal cloning once. What would your...supervision do?”

“She stays out of the cloning business and for that she gets protection from whoever her employers were.” Ella refused to give up the name, but when Nate got to pressing her mind for details, he could barely find any. Just a contact on a burner phone and a wire number for a bank overseas. “Aside from the fucker who induced Wade’s mutation in the first place, Whitby knows the most about Deadpool’s healing factor out of anyone in the world. That’s intel we can’t let fall into the wrong hands. Besides, she knows she fucked up and she’s not going to do it again if she wants to live. Right, Ella?”

Ella grumbles something under her breath.

_“Right, Ella?”_

Ella shrinks at the growl and evil eye Nate is throwing her. “Yeah, fine, okay.”

“Good. We all in agreement?” Nate doesn’t even glance at Wolverine or Beast. He bores his eyes at the Professor.

The Professor steeples his finger and makes as if he’s thinking for a few moments. Nate doesn’t need to be a telepath to know he’s already made up his mind. “Very well, that seems agreeable. If she clones a mutant again though, Cable, the X-Men will be forced to intervene.”

Good fuckin’ luck with that. “Deal,” says Nate.

Hank and Logan look irritated but don’t put up a fight as Wade leads Ella out of the Professor’s office with a saunter and starts chatting immediately. Nate tries to make for the door himself but gets caught by: “A word, if you will, Cable.”

Nate grits his teeth. “Yeah?”

“Colossus tells me you’re from the future, yes?” Professor X asks after they’re alone and the door is shut.

“That’s right.” _If you think you’re getting anything out of me, there’s no fucking chance._

 **I realize that** , relays the Professor mentally.

**You’re not getting passed my shield either.**

**No, they’re very well-formed, they seem like a more advanced version of the telepathic blocks I’ve used on one of my own students, Jean Grey**.

Nate’s brain shorts out.

**Do you share any relations with my other student, Scott Summers?**

“We’re done here.” Nate stomps out before the Professor can stop him.

When he gets back in the taxi, Ella is uncuffed and chatting happily with Wade. “Hey, guess what, Nate?” Wade says. “So you know how bounty-hunting ain’t the most stable form of income and you and I need to get a better space if we’re gonna unfuck the world?”

Nate glares at him.

“Meet my newest partner in entrepreneurship!” Wade slings an arm over Ella’s shoulders. “We’re gonna make molds of my dick and sell them on Etsy.”

“Amazon.”

“They’re handmade goods, they belong on every white woman’s secret sex Pinterest.”

“They’re not gonna be handmade by the time I’m done with them,” says Ella with weird ferocity. They then chat about this for the rest of the trip. Nate rubs his forehead and asks Dopinder to turn up the radio.

“Up or off, Mr. Cable?”

“Up. Please.” Why does Nate save the stupidest goddamn people?

 

—

 

At some point Nate is texted a picture, his only warning being, "SANDWORRRRRRM!"

It's the picture of Wade's dick, on a beach.

He calls Wade immediately, "Who took that picture."

"Me and an impressive auto timer."

"Mmhm."

"Okay fine i cut off my dick again for it to happen."

"Are you telling me that you're on the beach right now in a string bikini."

"I'm telling you I don't mind sand in strange places, yeah."

"Gimme your coordinates, I'm heading over."

**Author's Note:**

> One crisp high-five to every comment with a tasteful dick joke. - ladysassafrass


End file.
